The invention relates to a fuel filter of a motor vehicle which fuel filter is adapted for being mounted in a traveling direction of the motor vehicle and comprises a filter housing with a housing base body. The housing base body has a front side that is facing in the traveling direction.
Motor vehicles are provided with fuel filters for filtering the fuel supplied to the drive motor, wherein fuel filters of the aforementioned kind are mounted fixedly in the vehicle in a certain spatial orientation relative to the traveling direction of the vehicle. The available mounting space in the engine compartment is becoming increasingly tight and, as a result, such fuel filters are installed very close to the front end in the engine compartment where they are exposed to potential damage from crash loads. Appropriate mounting requirements and customer demands require a certain level of crash safety according to which the housing of the fuel filter must remain intact up to a predetermined level of crash-caused impact loading at least to such an extent that no leaks will occur and that no fuel will escape.
To meet these requirements, the filter housing may be manufactured of sheet metal that will deform or yield. This enables, in a crash situation, a plastic deformation without causing leakage. A disadvantage is in the high manufacturing costs.
Preferably, at least the housing base body is produced by casting technology, for example, by aluminum die casting. In this way, cost-efficient complex geometric structures can be realized. A comparable situation exists for housing base bodies made by aluminum extrusion or by injection molding of plastic material. Such components are however relatively brittle and have no appreciable plastic yielding properties relevant in a crash situation. Therefore, special protective measures are required for protecting the filter housing with regard to impact loads. In prior art configurations, at the front end of the housing base body in the traveling direction, crash armor is mounted as a separate component for this purpose. Such a component is effective with regard to its function but causes additional costs and undesirable additional weight.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to further develop a fuel filter of the aforementioned kind in such a way that with simple means an improved safety with regard to impact loads is provided.